Base of Operations: A base in the Ural Mountains,
presumably among others

First Appearance: X-Force I#110 (January 2001)

Weapons & Abilities Warborgs are heavily armed and
armored. They presumably have enhanced strength and resistance to damage, and may be faster and have
greater stamina than normal humans.

Warborgs are designed to operate in post-nuclear conditions.
They're shielded against electromagnetic pulses, and they have
photo-reflective cells to deflect lasers and other destructive forms
of directed light.

Every Warborg and Rawborg has a large energy cannon replacing
their right forearm. At least some of the Rawborgs can also fire
foot-long, spine-like tranquilizer darts. For fighting in
close-quarters, Warborgs have large spines on their backs and
shoulders, sharp enough to pierce superhumanly-tough flesh. The spines
are coated in a neurotoxin so lethal it can kill superhumans whose
powers are focused on strength and invulnerability.

A data cluster inserted between their cerebral hemispheres links
them to other Warborg cells in the region, and even shares and stores
visual data. It also allows them to operate when up to 80% of their
organics are gone.

Rawborgs are
Warborgs designed for infiltration. They appear to be normal humans
until they trigger their mutagenic augmentations. After that, they
don't appear to be able to revert to a human shape. Rawborgs are
frequently disguised as police officers.

HistoryWarborgs seem to be the most common Russian super-soldier; they
even come in 'model years.' Warborgs are corpses that have been
reanimated somehow through cybernetics and genetic alteration. (The
logic being: After their losses in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Russia
no longer likes wasting 'resources.' Even the corpses of the dead.)
Major Valentia Rychenko of the Russia army commented that "They don't
make [Warborgs] like they used to," which could mean the technology
has declined over time.

(X-Force I#112-FB/BTS) -- The first Warborgs were created in the
late '70s or early '80s by Dr. Constantin Racal. They were based on
theories Russia had acquired from the U.S. intelligence agency
Cuckoo. Racal created them after the Meatspores, and before the
Russian Sleeper Agents.

(X-Force I#111-FB/BTS) -- At some point, Major Valentina Rychenko
saw a single Warborg kill 300 men and boys, an entire Muhajadin rebel
camp in Afghanistan. "Cut to pieces small enough to fit in a shot
glass."

In the
present day, the Kremlin decided to deactivate the superhuman Sleeper
Agents they'd smuggled into the U.S. in the early 1980s. They sent
in Rawborg kill teams, who discovered that many of the Sleepers had
somehow reproduced. Since the children were superhuman mutants, more
powerful than their parents, the kill teams were ordered to retrieve
the children.

When Dr. Racal found out about this, he went AWOL to try and save
the Sleepers' children. His daughter, Major Valentina Rychenko, also went AWOL
to try to protect him. The Russian Dumae put kill orders
on both of them, and sent three pairs of Warborgs and Rawborgs to
carry out their field execution.

(X-Force I#110) -- Two Rawborgs disguised as police officers
entered the NYC home of the Russian Sleeper in the identity of Frank
Casey. They killed Casey and his wife, and abducted the Caseys'
daughter, one of the 'Anomalies,' before blowing up the building.

In San Diego, a squad of Rawborgs seeking the two Russian
deserters found Major Rychenko at a shipyard. Rychenko killed them
both, and used electronics she cut out of the chest of one Rawborg to
signal X-Force, by taking advantage of Jesse Bedlam's electromagnetic
powers.

(X-Force I#111-FB) -- SHIELD recovered the corpses of the two Rawborgs in San Diego, and became involved with the situation.

(X-Force I#111) -- In Bitter River, California, two Warborgs hunted
Major Valentina Rychenko. As they were about to commence with her
field execution, they were engaged by X-Force. Meltdown and Jesse
Bedlam both proved unable to damage them, and though Proudstar
managed to deactivate the two, one Warborg managed to stab him with a
spike coated in a neutrotoxin that nearly killed him.

A pair of Rawborgs looking for the Sleepers in La Jolla,
California found them just as Racal was finishing sending the
remaining Sleeper on her mission, and was loading their Anomaly
children into his minivan. The Rawborgs followed him to his bunker,
where he destroyed them.

I really liked the Warborgs and Rawborgs. They had a great
visual, and they proved to be pretty badass. I'd love to see them
again, especially fighting Captain America or Wolverine or some other
U.S. super-soldier.

So far, we've seen lots of individual super-soldiers representing
different countries. But as far as I'm aware, the Warborgs are the
first mass-produced super-army we've seen. And since they've been
around in Russia since before the fall of Communism, the U.S. has
got to have developed something comparable.
A discussion of the various super-soldier can be found in the
comments of the Nuke profile

Considering the way the Cold War powers have traditionally been
about selling weapons of mass destruction to other countries, it's
quite likely there are other nations in the MU with Warborg capacity.
Saddam's regime in Iraq is pretty high up on the list, considering
how everyone was selling him WMD back in the '80s... (I
actually had a script I was planning to write for EPIC Comics where
Pete Wisdom goes into Iraq right before the U.S. invaded, to take out
their superhuman weapons of mass destruction. Including
Warborgs. But then EPIC folded.)

Orphan Maker, the armored mutant who works with Nanny, a
fellow large purple mechanical guy with a gun for a right arm @
X-Factor I#30

Cyborg-X,
an American brought back to life as a cyborg super-soldier @
Spider-Man I#18 (though Cyborg-X may have been inspired by
Russia's Warborgs)

Any other cyborgs, super-soldiers, or 'war' characters

The Russian Sleepers are thematically connected to

The Nazi Sleepers, robots created in case the Third
Reich should lose World War II Sleepers 1-3 @ Tales of Suspense I#72-74

The British
Sleepers, created during WWI, WWII and Operation: Desert
Storm in case Britain should fall @ Plasmer#1

in that each was designed as a fail-safe by a nation fearing
annihilation from some other source. But there are no known
connections beyond that. They are also unconnected to any other
'sleep' characters.